Following the latest ballot count Tuesday night, Kshama Sawant had a 41-vote lead over 16-year incumbent Richard Conlin.

Given Washington state’s mail-in voting system, a winner won’t be named for days or even weeks after the Nov. 4 election.

Still, the strong showing by Sawant, a college economics professor and prominent figure in Seattle’s Occupy Wall Street movement, has surprised many people.

[...]

Sawant, 41, drew attention as part of local Occupy Wall Street protests that included taking over a downtown park and a junior college campus in late 2011. She then ran for legislative office in 2012, challenging the powerful speaker of the state House, a Democrat. She was easily defeated.

This year, Sawant’s platform includes raising the minimum wage to $15.00/hour, rent control, and levying higher taxes on millionaires to pay for public works. She has seized on what she calls “economic inequality” to get the attention of her fellow leftists:

“This is one of wealthiest cities in the wealthiest country in the world,” she said. “For people to struggle for basic needs is absurd.”

City Council races are technically non-partisan in Seattle. Sawant, however, made sure people knew she was running as a Socialist, a label that would ensure defeat in many areas of the country.

The last time a self-declared Socialist ran for office in Seattle was 1991, when Yolanda Alaniz emerged from the primary in second place but was easily defeated in the general election.

“There were certainly populist candidates,” said Cline, the city archivist. “I don’t think any of them you could remotely call Socialist. Certainly there has never been anybody who has run as strongly as Sawant has.”

Go figure. At a time when the rest of the country appears to be turning more toward conservatism, we can count on Seattle to keep the stereotype of the loony Left Coast alive.

All Chris Queen wanted to be growing up was a game show host, a weather man, or James Bond. But his writing talent won out.
By day, Chris is a somewhat mild-mannered church communications director, but by night, he keeps his finger on the pulse of pop culture and writes about it. In addition to his Disney obsession (as evidenced by his posts on this website), Chris's interests include college sports -- especially his beloved Georgia Bulldogs -- and a wide variety of music.
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I work in Seattle and it is a great city, which is why it is so sad to see it become a victim of its own success. It is rapidly losing its working-class character because of inane policies like the.minimum wage proposal (which just passed referendum in nearby SeaTac). Seattle is a wealthy city because of the tech jobs, so a significant portion of the populace has absolutely no concept of scraping by. Unfortunately, they're hurting people who had no say in this election, because if you work in a low-paying job like me you have to live outside of the city and move in. Seattle, like Detroit at one point, will be insulated from the immediate effects of its idiocy because of its success but that will only make the eventual collapse that much more catastrophic.

If we researched Kshama Sawant's income and weath, we'd find that she was doing far better than most people in the country of her birth (India). Can't she send some of the wealth back? Or is life in Seattle too good? Come to think of it, can't she pack her bags and bring her wisdom back to India as well?

I just moved away from Seattle in August, after living there since the late 1970s. I wouldn't see this as Seattle as being or going socialist. It's more a case of not thinking.

Seattle voters tend to be driven by feel good slogans like "Save Our Salmon." That one resulted in a lot of pricey schemes to make the city's few remaining open streams a bit safer for the season's minuscule number of salmon. $800,000 was spent on one such measure near where I was living on Thornton Creek. And yet no one really cares about those few salmon. They don't line the streams, counting them and oohing and ahhing when one comes by (rarely). Nor do they go to the bother of actually finding out what might help the salmon runs. Just vote, waste money and feel good.

Some mistakes are almost beyond imagination in their stupidity. A multi-billion dollar light rail project was trumpeted as connecting downtown with SeaTac airport, and yet the rail line ends a half-mile walk through a confusing array of parking garages from the the airport. It's so dreadful, to force people to use light rail, Metro canceled a bus route that went from downtown to within a couple of hundred feet of the check-in counters. Now it takes 3 buses and that same half-mile walk to get to the airport by anything other than light rail. An express bus would have been far better at a fraction the cost.

Every so often, the people of Seattle wake up, realize that they've elected a turkey--typically as mayor--and then vote him out over some one thing. One mayor got tossed for the WTO fiasco. Another for not clearing streets fast enough after a snowstorm. The current mayor just lost because the chubby little guy made a great show of riding a bike, ticking off Seattleites angry that the city's recent bike lanes on arterials give the city the 8th worst commute in the country.

But these voters are bright enough to realize that it's not the mayor who's wrecking the city's traffic flow. It's a street planning authority obsessed with an ideology called 'traffic calming' whose basic agenda is to choke up traffic and force almost everyone (they exempt themselves) on to mass transit.

And yet at the same time, the regional transit authority is threatening to cut or curtail over 170 bus routes if the voters don't give them more money. The local government is, at one and the same time, spending large sums to wreck traffic flow AND cutting back on mass transit.

So, I wouldn't get upset about Seattle. Occasionally, the country will make the mistake of following California, but no one is inclined to take Seattle's lead. Let them make mistakes so the rest of us can learn from them. A $15/hour minimum wage is one of those mistakes.

A ray of sunshine in the state of Washington was Republican Jan Angel's win in the 26th District State Senate special election. There is now a Senate Majority Coalition with 24 Republicans and 2 Democrats controlling the State Senate.

The election of Angel solidified the Majority and they will be a counterbalance to the Democratic Governor and State House for at least the upcoming year's sessions. None of the members of the Majority Coalition are from Seattle, so the Seattle delegation is having to talk to legislators from places like Eastern Washington. It is entertaining to watch at the state level.